Remnant
by Flaw's Revenge
Summary: One of those whatifthebabywasn'tChris stories that I'm sure I've seen around before. Anyway, here's my take on it, I guess.
1. Chapter 1

Notes: Um... So I found this saved in a folder I never use, and as near as I can tell, I wrote it a while ago, perhaps before I started working on "The Mistakes They Make" (Chapter 5 is in the works, I'm still working on responses to comments, sorry!). Anyway, I don't usually pull the whole "if you like it, I'll work on it" thing, but I guess I'll just say that if you all are interested, I usually become more interested. :-) As usual, I don't own Charmed or really much of anything at all.

* * *

"If I'm not conceived within the next few weeks, I'll disappear forever." –Chris, "I Dream of Phoebe"

* * *

"Congratulations. You have a beautiful healthy baby girl."

The nurse held the whimpering infant out to the flustered looking father, and Leo accepted it with equal doses of confusion and awe.

"Baby girl? But, I mean, Chris is a _boy_," he said as he peered down into the little red face.

"What? No, sir, this is a baby girl. I checked her over myself. Did the ultrasound suggest something else?" She adjusted the blanket and made a cooing noise, before turning her attention back to Leo.

"Uhh…I guess, I mean, I don't know." He shifted the baby and even as it struck him odd that it wasn't Chris he was looking down at, he was already falling in love with his new child.

The nurse looked confused, and then brightened. "Look, why don't you go and check on her mother. I'm sure if you two discuss it, everything will be clear." She gestured back into the recovery room behind her, then closed the doors after he had entered and turned to the remaining sisters and little Wyatt in the hallway.

"Sorry, but only one visitor at a time. I'll show you back to the waiting room, if you want," she said, sweeping her arm back the direction they had come.

"No thanks," said Phoebe, "we know the way."

The nurse nodded pleasantly and moved off down the hallway, onto more urgent things, no doubt, and the sisters watched her go.

"Well this is interesting," Paige said. "It looks like our buddy Chris had a few more things he didn't tell us."

Phoebe could only nod in response.

* * *

Leo approached Piper's hospital bed with the now quiet baby and stood over her. She looked tired but glowing and happy.

She looked up at him with a small smile. "How does he look?" she asked.

"She's beautiful," he said. "Just like her mother."

"Sorry, what? She?" She sounded like she was asking for confirmation because she was so tired and drugged that she couldn't possibly have heard that correctly.

Leo answered by grabbing a chair from behind him and sitting down close to her bedside so they could inspect the baby together, and sure enough, they confirmed that the baby was, in fact, not a boy.

Piper reached out and Leo placed the baby in her arms. "Melinda," she murmured, awestruck.

Leo looked up from the baby to its mother surprised. "Melinda?" he repeated.

* * *

"Maybe, you know, he got a sex change?"

Phoebe looked over at Paige with a look that bordered between shocked and repulsed.

"What?" Paige asked, defensive. "Stranger things have happened in this family."

* * *

When awareness first came back to him, Chris was shocked to find himself "Up There." When he thought back to dying on his parents' bed, he expected he would find himself either in some version of the afterlife or even back to life in a changed future. Certainly, he wouldn't have expected to find himself surrounded by a council of Elders, all of them looking atypically _not_ displeased with him.

He was standing, strangely enough, so after he was done being surprised at his whereabouts, he sank unceremoniously to the ground and clawed at his white shirt. It was still bloodstained, but when he pulled the shirt up to check his skin, there was no wound. He was completely healed. He pinched himself a little and decided that he didn't feel dead. Had they healed him? What was this? He looked back up and scanned the circle of faces, some that he recognized, some that he didn't. Some that he vaguely knew would be dead if not for his intervention in the past.

"What's going on?" he asked, or tried to ask. It came out like a croak and he cleared his throat to try again, but one of them was already speaking. She was an elderly looking woman, with crow's feet that made her look like most days she did a lot of laughing. Not this day.

"It is the decision of this council, that you, Christopher Peregrine Halliwell, be given a second chance."

"What?" he croaked, and cleared his throat again. "I don't understand." This time it came out clear, and the elder looked down on him with pity.

"Because you forfeited your existence for the good of the world, it is our decision that you be given a new existence." She frowned at him. "Do you accept?"

Chris felt his jaw drop, and suddenly, there was an ache back in his stomach. A new existence? "I don't understand," he repeated, "aren't I being born right now?"

"No," she said, and stepped forward, reaching out a hand to help him up, which he only looked at blankly. "Come and walk with me," she said.

He took her hand and they were gone from the circle of elders. They were now in a park, and the sun was shining overhead. He could hear birds and smell flowers. It reminded him of Bianca, but wasn't quite the same as the spot they had shared.

By the time he got his bearings, she was already walking ahead of him on a winding path. He hurried to catch up.

"A child who is essentially your twin has been born. I know you're an adult, so I won't go into too much detail of conception, but I point it out to say that the possibility of the baby being you was there, but even greater was the possibility that it wouldn't be you. To be perfectly clear, the egg was inseminated by a different sperm that the one that originally produced you."

Chris stopped walking and the elder stopped with him, talking his elbow and leading him to sit on a nearby bench. She sat with him, and folder her hands over her robes, looking every inch the picture of serenity.

"So I erased my existence after all?" He shook his head like he hoped it would clear it. "I don't know where to start," he said.

"Then I shall start at the beginning," she responded. "The day you would have been conceived, you were not, but a group of us elders, realizing the importance of your mission, decided that at least until the baby was born, you would exist. Further we decided that it was still possible that changes affecting the egg could still affect you, and thus we let it be. So when Piper took the antidote to the spider venom, you were thus inoculated. So I suppose," she continued, "you never would have noticed that the baby developing was not actually, well, _you_.

"But now your mission is complete. The world has been saved by saving your brother, but in the process you did not save yourself. So we decided to give you a new existence."

"Right," Chris said, and gave a short nod, his expression clearly showing his incredulity. "So this new existence…?"

"Is the same as yours was. You will remain everything that you were, and you will also remain in this time period. However, you will not age until your next proper birthday, which is, I believe, 23 years from this day. We argued considerably over that fact, but decided that you couldn't be allowed to travel back to your original time because you would not have existed for the 23 years in the interim. Neither, however, could you live outside your time and age because you would be living twice in the same 23 year time period. And finally, we could not return you to the state of an infant, because you've already aged to this point. You see, of course, the problem?" She looked at him with one raised eyebrow.

Chris' expression had not changed, and he only shrugged.

"Well, time travel is quite confusing," she said.

Chris gave a short bark of laughter and nodded in agreement, before turning away to stare up into the sky. "So where do I go from here?" he asked.

She reached over and grabbed one of his hands and held it in her own.

"You go home," she said. "You are, after all, still a Halliwell."


	2. Chapter 2

Well, this is faster than I usually ever update, but I'm having fun with this, and it's easy to write shorter snippets like this. Once again, none of it's mine, but it sure is fun to play with. :-)

* * *

"Besides, I'm a father first." –Leo, "Little Monsters"

* * *

Home. If he knew one thing for certain, it was that he did not want to go home. At home, there was a new baby, and it wasn't that he was prone to youngest child syndrome, it was that he had already begun to feel as though he had never been a child at all. Not in this time, and not in that family.

When the elder told him he was still a Halliwell, he knew deep down that she was wrong. He wasn't a Halliwell anymore. He gave that up when he came back from his future and introduced himself as a Perry. Could he be Christopher Peregrine Perry now?

He would have to be.

He removed his hand from between hers and looked her straight in the eye. "I'm not a Halliwell anymore," he said. "In this time line, I'm not a Halliwell."

She cocked her head, "Well, you may not have been born, but genetically…"

"I'm not a Halliwell," he repeated. "I know you think you're doing me a favor, giving me all this extra time, giving me a life back, but I don't want that life. I can't have that life."

"Then what do you want?"

"Give me some charges. Let me work as a whitelighter. I can do that."

"And your family?"

"They're not mine anymore."

* * *

Melinda was a beautiful baby, both of her aunts agreed. Sure, she cried and fussed, but even when she was doing that it was beautiful. They argued with each other over who should hold her, and they argued over who should feed her, and they even argued over who should change her, except in that case they were arguing for someone else to do it.

When Piper and Leo brought her home, and placed her in the bassinette, the family felt a joy and a peace that they hadn't felt in a while. Wyatt was home safe and not evil, all the sisters were together, and even Piper and Leo were back together. The only thing missing was Chris.

* * *

"I'm afraid that without healing abilities, you won't be able to completely protect any charges," she said as they walked back through the gardens. "I can suggest to the council that you be allowed to serve as a part-time whitelighter, but I would rather not. You're alive. You would do more good as a witch."

"I'm not exactly alive," he said. "I'm stuck at 23 for the next 23 years. How would I explain that to normal people? Besides, I may not be able to heal, but I have other abilities."

"I'd like you to reconsider going home."

"I'd like you to give up on that."

She snorted a little and stopped in the path to face him. "You've been given a great gift, Chris, and while I think you're wasting it, it's not my place to stop you. I will confer with the other elders about your requests."

"Thank you."

* * *

Piper and Leo stood in their bedroom and looked down at the last place they had seen their younger son. The bed looked as though it had never even been touched.

"Did he go back to the future?" Piper asked.

Leo shrugged a little and ran his hand over the pillow where Chris' head had been.

"Probably not. How could he go back to a future in which he doesn't exist?"

"Maybe he wasn't our son after all, though. Maybe he was adopted, or just a friend of Wyatt's. Then he could still go back. He could be alive." She sat on the bed and put her hand over his.

"How can you say that?" he whispered, and pulled his hand away. "He was our son."

She reached her hand up to his face. "Melinda is our daughter," she said.

He searched her face. "That doesn't mean he's not ours, too."

She sighed and turned away. "I'm tired, Leo." He thought he heard her sniffling, but he let it go.

Leo left Piper in their bedroom after he had helped her settle down for a nap by finding her a blanket and removing her shoes. They hadn't talked anymore about a subject that was clearly bothering both of them. He found his sisters-in-law in the baby's room, Phoebe holding Melinda in the rocking chair and Paige putting away some of the new items they had bought once they found out they had a niece instead of another nephew. Suddenly, they had found themselves with a shortage of things in pink.

"Oh Leo," Phoebe breathed, "she's so beautiful. Our beautiful little niece. Yes she is," she cooed down at the sleeping child and continued to rock.

"Yeah, good work, daddy," Paige said and held up some little pink slippers. "See what we got her?"

Leo took the slippers and turned them over in his hands. "They're great, thanks guys."

"Whoa, shouldn't you be a little more excited about this?"

Leo handed the slippers back with a sigh. "I am excited," he said, "but I just lost a son. I can't be excited about that."

Paige and Phoebe exchanged a look. "Of course you should be sad about Chris, Leo," Phoebe said, "but he would want you to be happy. He did what he came here for. He saved Wyatt."

Leo shook his head. "He may not have admitted to it, but I don't think that's the only reason he came here. I think he knew that saving Wyatt would save the future, but I think he hoped that it would save our whole family."

Phoebe stood and brought Melinda over to Leo. "Hold your daughter," she said as she passed the baby to her daddy. Once the precious cargo had been safely transferred, she said, "He did save our family, and even gave us something precious. We should be celebrating him."

"How?" Leo asked as he looked down into the face of his sleeping child.

Paige steered him over to the rocking chair. "By raising a little girl. By raising your son to be good. By loving your wife and being nice to her sisters. By being happy."

The girls busied themselves around the room a little longer and then left quietly. After they had gone he rocked gently and studied his daughter. She had been unexpected, sure, but he loved her, just as he had loved Chris once he'd known. He wouldn't give her up now for the whole world, and he felt the same way about Chris. He had to figure out what had happened.

He put Melinda down in the bassinette and orbed away.

* * *

"The elders have agreed to your requests, but also ask that in addition to your whitelighter duties you continue to practice as a witch. Like you said, you do have other abilities."

"Okay," he said. "It probably would have been hard for me to avoid anyway."

She smiled at him gently. "Your first assignment is in Chicago. He's a university student there. We thought you might take the opportunity to take some classes yourself, maybe decide what you want to do with the time you've been given."

She reached a hand out and placed it on his shoulder. "Remember, you can always go home, if you need to." She laughed at the exasperated look he gave her, and then they were gone from the garden.

* * *

Up there, Leo found the council clacking away at each other excitedly, but a hush fell over them when he approached.

When none of them immediately spoke to him, he put his hands out in a helpless gesture.

"Where is my son?" he asked.

After some mumbling amongst themselves, one finally stepped forward. It was a woman, but she didn't remove her hood so he was unable to identify her.

She said, "Leo, go home to your family. Everything is as it will be."

Leo shook his head. "I can't accept that. I can't accept that he doesn't exist. Not after everything he did for us. For the whole world."

"A decision has been made," she said. "There is nothing more to be done."


	3. Chapter 3

Notes: I wanted to get this out before Thanksgiving as I won't have much internet connection for the duration of the eat-way-too-much holiday. Perhaps it will give me more time to write? Anyway, here's chapter 3, which contains parental bickering, the kids being cute, and introduction of an OC as a shameless plot device. For those that worry, no Mary Sues from me, EVER, and definitely not a romantic interest. Charmed, of course, is not mine.

* * *

"Gideon's gone, Wyatt and Chris are safe, it all worked out" –Piper, "A Call to Arms"

* * *

In Chicago, Chris found himself watching over two of the most boring charges ever. One of them wasn't even aware of the fact that he was a witch, and had never even accidentally cast a spell or used a power. He was far too busy playing football and trying to pick up women. Chris kept tabs on him only sporadically. His other charge had no spell casting ability and only a mild power that helped things grow. She went to weekly meetings with her hippie college coven and had no idea that watering her plants once in a while would have down the same thing as her power. 

He knew that the elders had given him two charges that didn't need, nor had they ever had before, a whitelighter. He took their advice to heart and enrolled in a few classes each semester. He studied business and law, and even took a few cooking classes. Once a week he took his books to the coffee shop where his charge met with her coven and tried alternately to prevent himself from laughing at them or teaching them.

* * *

After five years, Piper found herself picking Melinda up from her last day in kindergarten. She would be starting first grade in the fall, shortly before her sixth birthday. Piper held her on her hip and looked lovingly into warm brown eyes. She had done her hair in pigtails that morning, and now she ruffled the remaining mess affectionately. 

"Did you have a good day?" she asked.

"We got to play animals!" Melinda exclaimed, and held up a rough picture of a tiger. Piper took it from her and oohed and aahed appropriately. It would be up on the fridge tonight, along with Wyatt's final report card from the second grade.

* * *

Both of his charges required extra time to graduate, and after five years, Chris found himself with more than enough credits to claim a degree. In the coffee shop, where the staff knew him only as the-guy-who-came-in-once-a-week-to-eavesdrop-on-the-coven, he stared down at his transcripts and thought about graduate school or law school or getting a real job. It blew his mind a bit, not much more that actually getting a degree did, but enough that he truly felt like his old world was gone and going to stay that way. 

He was engrossed in his thoughts and startled when he heard someone call his name.

He looked up to see the speaker was a newer member of the coven. She was an older woman who had come only about every other week for the past couple months.

"It is Chris, right?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said, and set his papers down. He watched as she came over and sat herself at his table.

"I'm June," she said, and stuck her hand out. "I know your parents."

He looked at her hand but didn't take it. "You must have me confused with someone else."

"No," she said, "I'm sure it's you. I saw your picture at their house while I was out in California, before I decided to move my daughter and me here. Your little sister and my daughter were friends in pre-school, so your mother and I arranged play dates."

"I don't think so," he said.

She pulled her hand back finally and studied him. "I won't tell them I saw you," she said. "Piper wouldn't talk about you except to say you were her son, so I understand if there's some tension between you. I was on the outs with my family for years; I get it."

"Like I said, you've got me mixed up with someone else," he said, and gathered his papers together and began shoving them into his bag.

"Alright, well, maybe I'll see you around again sometime, Chris. You should come and join the coven next time, instead of just sitting over here by yourself."

He picked up his bag and stood up to leave, but found himself still looking down at her, unable to look away.

"They really have my picture up?"

* * *

Leo was already home when Piper and Melinda got there, half listening to Wyatt's talk about his new Transformers while he got a snack ready for the kids. She sat Melinda down and watched her run right to her older brother and join in on the Transformer talk. She kissed Leo on the cheek and hung the picture of the Tiger up on the fridge, next to the already posted report card. 

"What's for snack?" she asked.

"Peanut butter apples," he said, and held one up for her inspection.

"Yummy," she said, and stole it from him to eat it herself.

"How are things at the club?" he asked. "Is the band going to come through?"

"No," she said, "but I've got a local band lined up already to fill in. I think everything will work out okay. They've played P3 before and done a great job. What did you do today?"

He took the apples over to the kids and helped Melinda and Wyatt get situated at the table.

Turning back to Piper, he said, "I heard something interesting today, Up There."

"Oh yeah? Another demon?"

"No, it was about a whitelighter. I think maybe…" He trailed off and looked uncertain.

"What, Leo? Should I get Phoebe and Paige for this?"

"Let's talk later," he said, with a glance at the children.

* * *

June was something of a nomad. She traveled a lot, met up with other witches when she could, and raised her daughter to read maps for the road and keep her powers in control. Chris sat back down at the table and let her tell him about play dates at Halliwell manor. He got her to tell him about Melinda, a happy little girl who was very much loved, and Wyatt, an energetic little boy who still sometimes orbed without much thought to the consequences. 

"And your parents are doing well," she said. "The only time I saw them as anything other than proud parents was when they refused to talk about you. Then they just seemed sad."

"Yeah," he said, and couldn't think of anything to add.

"You know," she said, "if you went home again, they'd only be happy. They want you there."

"I don't know about that."

"I do. I went home again. You can, too."

* * *

"I think Chris is still alive," Leo said, as soon as the bedroom door had closed behind them. "I heard some of the elders talking about a whitelighter with no real charges. One of them wanted to reassign him, but the other said he didn't have healing powers. It must be Chris." 

"Now come on, Leo. You don't know that. There could be other whitelighters out there with no healing abilities. Paige can't heal."

He shook his head. "What are the chances of yet another child from a witch and a whitelighter?"

She sat down on the bed with a sigh. "Probably pretty high," she said in a dry tone.

He stood in front of her and studied her face. "Why don't you want this to be Chris?" he asked.

"What? Are you serious?"

"Every time I try to talk about him, you change the subject."

"Things are good now, Leo. We have two wonderful children, there haven't been many demon attacks, and we even have nieces now. I want to dwell on the things that are good."

Leo looked down at her sadly. "We have three children, Piper."

She looked away from him for a while, and when she finally looked back, there were tears in her eyes. "We lost him, Leo. He's not coming back."


	4. Chapter 4

Notes: So it turned out I had absolutely no internet over the holiday. Fun. But I did have my computer! Thus, here is chapter 4, and chapter 5 is a brief conversation away from being finished. Hopefully I will get to responding to comments tomorrow. Thank you all for reading!

* * *

"I wouldn't give up. There may be hope for you, yet." –Phoebe, "I Dream of Phoebe"

* * *

Chris and June met for coffee every other week for a few years. Chris tried holding down a job with his business degree and stayed long enough to pay off his loans and figure out that the so-called real world was not for him. June kept him updated on her daughter's progress through primary school and Chris imagined Melinda in her place. He imagined a sister he never knew but loved anyway and sometimes when he daydreamed he inserted himself, going to school with her and being a brother to her. He imagined Wyatt, the older sibling, sometimes bullying, but mostly good, and never anything like the Wyatt his had grown up to be.

"I had to tell him that I just wouldn't pay the rent. Until the heat is fixed, nothing doing," June was saying. "I don't care that it's not cold out yet. What if we had a freak snow storm or something? This is Chicago, and I can't raise a daughter in a cold apartment."

"Yeah," Chris said, idly sipping his coffee.

"You know," she said, "this whole conversation thing works better when both parties pay attention."

"I'm paying attention!" he said. "Your heat's out; you're pissed."

"Well then maybe you should help me out with it."

He put his coffee down. "What? 'Help you out with it?' Sounds like personal gain, June. You know I'm not into that."

"Come on, Chris," she whined. "You did that thing when the power went out last winter. This really isn't that much different."

"June, at that point, it really was cold. It's 75 degrees out today. You don't need the heat, and your landlord will take care of it."

"So I guess asking you for the pony my daughter wants would be out of the question, too, huh?"

Chris pretended to look thoughtful. "No, that I think I could handle," he said.

She laughed, but sobered quickly. "You're right, I shouldn't ask you for magical fixes. I'm sorry."

"Hey, don't worry about it. I understand the temptation, believe me."

"If I needed something that wasn't personal gain, you'd help me out again though, right?"

"You mean if we get that freak snow storm you mentioned? Yeah, I'd fix your heat then. Promise."

* * *

While Melinda and Wyatt grew bigger, and Leo was starting to see shades of the older Wyatt he had seen once or twice, Leo spent time looking for Chris. He didn't tell Piper or her sisters, but he couldn't let it go himself. He spent time on top of the bridge, in the place he'd felt both furthest away from, and closet to, his other son. But no matter how long or hard he tried to cast out his senses, he felt nothing.

After days on the bridge he was usually surly, and found it difficult to attend to his duties to both the magical realm and his family. Piper only had to tell him once that he was upsetting the children to make him realize he needed another way to find Chris, a way that would keep him from estranging the rest of his family in the meantime. So when he was frustrated, he would go lurking around Up There.

Elders were a gossipy sort. Of course, it was in the name of working towards the greater good, but really, he thought it was because they were a bit too bored after drifting around in white washed nothingness for decades on end. It was Up There that he had overheard the conversation about the whitelighter who couldn't heal, and it was Up There he went to try and learn more.

For years he heard almost as much nothing as he gained on the bridge. Sure, there were other things to learn about, new demons were constantly becoming a threat and subsequently being vanquished. Occasionally there was a dead whitelighter or dead charges, but most of those cases were resolved quickly enough to become old news. Only a few things lingered, like the sporadic witch turning up dead when he or she hadn't been involved in any sort of spell casting or magic making. Usually those were left to be dealt with by the local authorities instead, because the 'real world' often did encroach upon their magical one. Leo took the more interesting or dangerous sounding cases to the sisters as he always had, and they never had any reason to question how he had come about the knowledge in the first place; it was his job, after all.

Another five years of snooping around yielded next to nothing. He heard only a few more mentions of the whitelighter who couldn't heal, but it seemed that there wasn't much reason to talk about a whitelighter with no real charges, other than to speculate upon what would happen if that whitelighter ever found himself with an injured charge and design contingency plans. Leo was convinced this was Chris, but any elder he tried to question seemed to know even less than Leo did himself.

* * *

Piper and her sisters raised their girls with one eye towards a normal life and one eye towards a magical one and constantly focused on forming a balance between the two. So when Melinda wanted to go over to a friend's house for a sleepover, of course that was fine, so long as they had a discussion first about what to do in the event of a magical emergency, how to avoid using powers no matter what, and to always be polite and clean up after herself. Piper imagined that in a few years, the conversation would be about parties and dances and would go, "No drinking, no drugs, no magic. Be home by 10pm."

Wyatt was a slightly different case, and after elementary school they had sent him to the newly opened Magic School, run by Paige herself, where often he was in classes taught by his aunt or even his father. He was doing excellently with his active powers, keeping them under control as his strength grew, but he needed work with things like spell casting and potion making. Piper wanted him to be prepared for a life of magic, and for a life where as the eldest, he would be able to take care of his sister and cousins. She also wanted to foster ties to the magical community, because a little part of her remembered the Wyatt he could have been and wanted him to have as many positive influences as possible.

Once or twice, when Leo brought them a demon to take care of, they would look at each other and smirk because like son like father, but other than that, they never mentioned Chris. Piper tried to picture him at ten years old, like Melinda, going to school and making friends, and coming home and playing with Wyatt, but she often thought that the picture she formed in her head wasn't anything like the real thing. She thought of Chris as perpetually neurotic, and even the ten year old wanted to take care of demons before playing video games or doing his homework.

But she knew that couldn't have been true. The little she'd learned from Victor, and from Chris himself, indicated that before she'd died, Chris had been happy enough, and definitely not neurotic. He may have had father issues, but she knew from personal experience that that did not result in a man like Chris. Having a dead mother and an evil older brother was what changed him.

So in five more years, Piper tried not to dwell on what could have been, and tried to raise her children as best she could. She never told them, nor did she allow anyone else to tell them, about Chris. There was no point in entertaining thoughts of what could have been, and there was no point in scaring young children with dead relatives they had never even known and who would not respond to a summoning or any other magical attempts at communication.

Not that she had tried or anything.

* * *

Chris knew June for just about five years, and after that, she claimed a wanderlust that had haunted her all her life and took off for warmer climes. Chris was sad to see her go. He wasn't a naturally gregarious person, and had very few real acquaintances, even after ten years in Chicago.

"This is last time I can meet for coffee," she'd said. "I'm taking my daughter and heading out after this. I need to see more of the world that isn't covered in white for half the year. I want to see more greens and blues."

"There are a few lovely art museums here," he'd said. "Lots of opportunities for green and blue."

"Chris. I'm leaving. And I think you should, too. For five years I've watched you sit there and not age a single day. You look exactly the same. I don't know what's up, but I think you should go home and get it checked out. Your family can help you with whatever it is."

"I like Chicago. I like the weather…sort of."

"You don't mean that."

"I have obligations here. I can't just leave."

"You can always leave. Nothing should be able to keep you where you don't want to be."

"Really, June, I have a job here."

"Leave it. Seriously. I'm telling you from experience here. Get out of Chicago and go home."


	5. Chapter 5

AN: Chapter 5! And moving along steadily...I have an outline that says 13 chapters right now, of course, always subject to change. Anyway, I own nothing, even though I'd like to. I hope you enjoy!

* * *

"Look, I haven't been a whitelighter very long, okay?" –Chris, "Valhalley of the Dolls, Part 1"

* * *

It turned out that Chris didn't have to decide whether or not to stay in Chicago after June was gone. The decision was taken out of his hands when one of his charges, the football player, decided to move to Florida to cheer on his favorite team, the Gators, and the other charge disappeared. He wasn't wholly surprised to wake up one morning and not be able to sense her, because she had often gone off on vision quests and the like before (involving means more fungal than magical) and fallen off his radar. He had every confidence she would turn up eventually.

So instead of going in to work, he had answered the summons Up There, and found himself back in a garden he hadn't visited in over ten years.

"Are you giving me new charges?" he asked his designated elder when she approached.

"Surely you're bored of that by now?"

"Why would I be? I watched my charges, I went to college, and I got a job. I finally had a shot at a real life."

"How was it?" she asked, and sat down on a bench. She seemed genuinely curious.

He sat with her and they looked out over the garden together. It was exactly the same.

"It was okay. Classes were interesting, the job was alright. You did give me boring charges, though. I did more magic helping out a friend than I did helping out my charges."

She paused for a moment before speaking like she was taking that in, then said, "Perhaps that was your mistake."

"What?" He tried to think of when he had made a mistake. Neither of his charges had needed him. He had checked in on them and made sure they weren't getting in over their heads, which was easy since neither of them had known any real magic, and everything had been always been fine.

She looked at him steadily, and was calm, almost disinterested when she said, "One of your charges is dead, Chris."

"That's not possible," he said. "I would know."

"It's alright. The witch died of natural causes. Well, as natural as a drug overdose can be, but not magical, nonetheless."

He didn't know if that was supposed to make him feel better, or worse. A magical death meant he had failed as a whitelighter. A non-magical death still meant he had failed to oversee his charge. "When did this happen?" he asked, even though he already knew.

"Last night. You were aware that she liked to dabble, correct?"

"She always was good with plants…" he murmured.

"Chris," she admonished.

"I was aware."

The first time he had been unable to sense her he had freaked out and was frazzled and anxious by the time he'd found her, passed out in a friend's apartment. The times after that hadn't even fazed him.

"And you didn't think it right to intervene?"

He knew how to deal with a lot of things, like darklighters, demons, and all sorts of things, including an older brother worse than anything in the Source's wildest dreams. But drugs and other human problems were not really his area, especially not when both he and the elders knew they had been assigned as a cover, a ruse to keep him happy.

"You gave me fake charges," he said. "Why would I have intervened?"

She sighed. "She was still a witch, Chris, powerful or not. You still could have helped her."

"It's not like she was addicted," he said. "I'm not in the lifestyle management business. If a demon was attacking her, I would have stepped in."

She studied him for a while and he wished he knew what was going on in her head. "Whatever the case," she said, "the council has decided not to assign you any new charges for the time being."

"Okay. So what does that mean? I should follow the other one to Florida?"

"No, we've decided to reassign that witch to a new whitelighter."

Chris stood up, starting to feel like the other shoe was about to drop and he wasn't going to like it.

"So I have no charges."

"Correct."

"And? What does that mean?" he repeated.

She looked up at him. "We think that you could use some experience dealing with people on a more human basis."

"Are you kidding me? You're telling me you don't think I play well with others?"

"Perhaps if you'd gotten to know your charge as a person, you could have helped her with her drug problem and made her a better witch."

"Is this a joke? I thought whitelighters were supposed to remain hidden from their charges anyway. Now you're telling me that I was supposed to make friends with them? What's next? Marry them and start a family?"

"You're overreacting."

"I'm not overreacting, and I'm not bad with people. I had friends in Chicago."

"You had one friend, if my sources are correct."

"So if I had thrown a party every night you would have been happy? But that's not it, is it? You don't care about how many friends I had. You care about how much I care." He glared down at her. "You want me to be more like my father."

She didn't respond, and after a moment he threw his hands up in disgust and turned away from her to head down a path that lead no where in a garden that didn't even really exist.

He paced in front of a fountain and couldn't even process everything that he was learning. He had gone from having another mediocre day in a mediocre life where he did a decent enough job of watching charges that didn't need watching, to having a backwards day where his charge was dead and the elders told him that he needed to improve his social skills.

"When we met the first time," he said, "you knew who I was. You knew what I had done to save Wyatt. You knew it wasn't all good magic and play-by-the-rules."

He turned around and she was there, just as he had known she would be, standing patiently.

"We want you to go home, Chris. Your parents would do their jobs better if they could stop worrying about you."

"That's what this is about?"

"You would do a better job, be a better witch, if you weren't still living in a world where Wyatt could turn evil at any moment. It's over. You can go home now."

"I already told you, no. There is no home for me there."

She turned and began to walk away from him this time. Over her shoulder she called back, "The council has decided to answer Leo's questions."

He stared after her and mouthed, "What questions?" even though he thought he already knew.

* * *

Leo had intended to spend a long Saturday with his kids at the park. Wyatt, at 12, was really into baseball, and Melinda, just 10, was really into whatever Wyatt was into, so they had taken a bat and a ball and a couple gloves and gone to the park. There were other kids there, so he sent them with the standard "be careful" out to play and sat on a bench to oversee the action. Piper was at the club, preparing for another busy Saturday night, and her sisters were off with their husbands, having a normal, non-magical day. Everyone's favorite.

So when the he heard the elders calling him, he didn't immediately go Up There. He wasn't thrilled with them after the past ten years of brush offs and if he heard, "Everything is as it will be," one more time he was going to…well, he didn't know what he would do.

They called for him on and off all day, but he remembered how Chris had told him he hadn't been there for him, and he didn't want to take any chances that Wyatt or Melinda would ever have cause to say that, so he stayed with his kids until he put them to bed, then brought Victor over to watch over them while he finally went Up There.

An elder was waiting for him, and he recognized her hooded form as the one who first told him, all those years ago, to let it lie. He still didn't know who she was, but he felt angry with her anyway.

"Have you called me up here to tell me to back off?" he asked. "Because I haven't found anything to back off from, but even so, I won't. I'm not going to give up on my son."

"Good," she said. "I have something to tell you."


	6. Chapter 6

Hi! I'm working on catching up on feedback, and I will, I promise. I only have internet on and off right now, so it's kind of touch and go. But! Here is a new chapter, and I hope you're all having a lovely holiday, whatever it is you celebrate. As always, none of these characters belong to me. I do, however, love them quite dearly.

* * *

"I just think that we have to face the reality that Chris's destiny might have been just to come here and warn us about Wyatt, and that's all." –Phoebe, "The Courtship of Wyatt's Father"

* * *

He went back to his studio apartment and stood in the middle of the room, lost.

His charge was dead. He hadn't been watching over her like he should have been, and now she was dead. He was a terrible whitelighter; the elders were right to take his other charge away.

He sat down on his couch and stared numbly at the blank wall before him. In ten years, he hadn't even put up pictures. He'd barely come to this place at all. He'd spent his time at work, or at class, or in parks, or by the lake. And at the coffee shop. With June.

June was gone, and he didn't have a single person he could turn to. And what could he have said anyway? I'm a crappy whitelighter and now my charge is dead?

He supposed that normally, whitelighters would go Up There and chat with other whitelighters and with elders. But he wasn't normal, and he sure wasn't going back Up There. He'd had enough of secret gardens and elders messing around with his life.

But he certainly wasn't going home either. Especially not now that he was a failure at the only thing he'd tried outside of life as a Halliwell. He could imagine Paige taunting him and Phoebe nodding knowingly. Of course he was a screw up. He was meant for one thing, and he had done it. Wyatt was safe; there was nothing left.

* * *

Leo stood for a long time, staring off into the white nothingness on the edge of Up There. He couldn't get over his shock from what the elder had told him. All this time, he'd hoped that he'd find his son, but he hadn't ever really expected to learn this.

He had imagined scenarios where Chris was growing up with another family, normal and nothing magical about it. Or where Chris had kept on living, only with no memory of where he'd been before. Or he was working for the elders, doing secret undercover work to take down evil once and for all. In all the things he had pictured, Chris had a reason for not coming home—a physical, unavoidable reason. Child status. Memory loss. Secret agent. Anything like that. He'd had a long time to dream up reasons.

Of course, he had long since thrown out dead and gone forever. That was unacceptable, and the other reasons he had thought of he could deal with. But this made him ache deep down inside.

His son had been hiding out. From his family. For ten years.

His son was still hiding out, even though he'd been told Leo would be coming for him. He was avoiding his family, his home, and everything he had ever known, for what?

All Leo knew so far was that he had charges and a job far away from California; he had asked for a new life and been granted one. Leo wished it didn't sting quite as much as it did.

On the edge of Up There, he tried to decide. He had the tools to find his son now, but apparently Chris didn't want to be found. And he couldn't go home to Piper and tell her that he'd found their son without first getting Chris to agree to come home. He wasn't going to break her heart again, so he decided to take a page from her book instead.

He braced himself for a fight and an argument and orbed away.

* * *

Chris had given up on the empty apartment and gone back down to the café. He sat at his usual spot and stared at the vacant chair across from him.

_I screwed up. What do I do?_

_How about a peppermint mocha to start with? Then you can cry it out and I'll pat you on the back or something._

_June, come on. I'm serious here._

_Chris. You know what you need to do. We've been over this._

_I'm not ready._

_You never will be. You've got to rip that band aide off and go. No more second guessing. _

He looked down into black coffee and sighed. Not only was he pathetic enough to lose a charge, but now he was talking to people that weren't even there.

The chair across from his was pulled out and he looked up, expecting to see June. Hoping to see June.

It wasn't June.

"You know," Victor said, stirring a packet of sugar into his tea, "Leo told me you would look the same, but this…" He waved his hand in Chris's direction. "This is amazing. You look exactly like the last time I saw you.

"How do I look? I gave up the smoking, just like you said, and grandkids have done me good, I think. Actual, young grandkids, that is. You, on the other hand, seem to cause an endless amount of stress."

Chris stared him with his mouth embarrassingly wide open before he shook himself and tried something more coherent.

"Grandpa, what? I mean, how did you get here? How did you know where I'd be?"

Victor looked at him over his cup at he took a sip. While he sat it back down on the table he said, "Leo brought me." He shuddered dramatically. "I hate that orbing thing you guys do. It's going to take a bit longer to get used to."

"Leo brought you? Is he here?" Chris looked around the coffee shop but didn't see him, and couldn't decide if it was relief or distress he felt.

"He's parking the car, or hiding out outside or something. Not that we brought a car. He sent me in first. Coward."

Victor took another sip while Chris stared out the front windows.

"You know," he said, "when my son-in-law orbed into my living room this afternoon, without any of my daughters or grandkids, I knew something was up. When he started pacing around my coffee table, I knew it was something big. But when he told me… I yelled a bit. I couldn't believe it, not after everything that happened back then. I mean, I never thought I would get this moment. I thought you were dead, and you can explain that to me later. But then Leo said you were alive and had been for the past ten years." Victor leaned over the table until he caught Chris's eyes and kept them. "It's time to come home."

"I can't," Chris whispered, holding the eye contact.

"You can. You should have right away, but what's done is done. We'll deal with it. All of us."

Chris broke the stare to cast his gaze back to the windows. He pictured his father there, just out of view, but it wasn't his father, not really. It was Leo. He wanted to tell Victor that they weren't even related anymore. He wanted to tell him that he didn't belong back with the family. He wanted to tell him that he was a terrible whitelighter and then orb down to Florida to stick to his other charge like glue, even if he wasn't assigned to him anymore. He said nothing.

Instead, Victor reached over and grabbed his wrist. "I'm serious, kiddo. Whatever it is, we'll take care of it. Your parents miss you like crazy, and I do, too. You've got to see Wyatt, and meet Melinda. You've missed so much, and you've been missed." Victor tugged at his arm. "Come on, I'm getting old, and I want to see all my grandchildren together at least once.

"And I want to hear about this fountain of youth thing you've got going on. You've got to tell me how I can get in on that."


	7. Chapter 7

Here's a disclaimer that I haven't seen seasons 7 and 8 (except for the series finale), and I don't understand why it is that Leo gets old…is he still a whitelighter? Can he still orb? For the purposes of this story, Leo is still a whitelighter, and he is aging with Piper, and if that's not canon…well, neither is this story. :-) This chapter is mainly filler; the plot doesn't much move at all, and it's completely not on my outline...which only means that this is going to go on longer than I originally thought. Pretend to be happy now, okay? Thanks again for all the reviews; happy reading!

* * *

"We just got a little lost, that's all and took some time to find our way back." –Chris, "Soul Survivor"

* * *

Chris pulled his hand away from Victor gently, and went to the door of the coffee shop. He felt Victor's eyes on his back, but if he didn't do this now, he was more likely to orb to Florida and tell the elders and everyone else out there that they were going to do things his way, or no way at all. He was getting pretty sick of the Powers That Be meddling in everything.

Outside, he didn't spot Leo immediately in front of the shop, and he felt a little foolish standing there. But he knew Victor had been telling the truth. It was impossible for him to be there otherwise.

He looked around, at the Chinese restaurant on the corner and the little alternative bookstore across the street and, and then he saw him. Leo was facing away from him, across the street, looking into the window of the bookstore. His hair had grayed, and he looked more like the father Chris remembered from his own childhood and less like the young elder he had met, and fought with, here in this timeline.

He cleared his throat a bit uneasily, and crossed the street carefully. "Hey," he said, when he got there.

Leo spun around and looked at him, and Chris saw his eyes widen. It didn't really stun him anymore that he was still stuck at 23, but looking at the way Victor and Leo had both been changed in that time, he knew it was shocking. He probably looked to Leo exactly as he had when he had died. He pushed that back out of his mind.

"Victor says you've come to take me home." He folded his arms over his chest, then realized it would seem defensive, which it was, but he straightened them anyway and held them awkwardly next to his body.

"You look good," Leo said, and reached out with what seemed to be an aborted hug that ended with him patting him on the shoulder instead.

"I work out," Chris said dryly, and fidgeted under the touch. When Leo didn't respond to his little attempt at a joke, he said, "I, um, guess I need to pack or something," and surprised himself with how easy it was to agree to come home. So far, June had been right.

"Right," Leo said, and looked relieved. "Did you leave your grandfather in the coffee shop?"

"Yeah, he's there. He said he wasn't too thrilled about the orbing." Chris offered him a small smile.

Leo chuckled. "He says that every time."

They crossed the street in silence and found Victor with a fresh cup of tea, sitting right where Chris had left him.

"Chris needs some time to pack," Leo said. "So once you finish that," he gestured at the cup, "we can go do that."

Victor nodded, but said, "Maybe you guys should go. I'm too old for heavy lifting. I'll be fine waiting here."

Chris recognized the attempt to give him time alone with Leo, but he was didn't want Leo up in his apartment, and he wasn't ready for too much time alone, not just yet. He wasn't ready for the conversations that he was sure would arise.

"That's okay," he cut in before Leo could say anything, "I can handle it on my own. It won't take long."

He left the coffee shop again before they could say anything further, and when he was out of site, orbed back to his apartment. He grabbed a duffle bag and filled it with the clothes he had a collected, a few books, and a toothbrush and other toiletries. The dishes and furniture he had gotten second or third hand and had no particular attachment to. He wrote a note out for his land lord and left the keys on the small kitchenette counter, made sure the apartment was locked, and orbed back to the coffee shop.

It was just that easy to leave another life behind. He tried not to think about it, just like he was trying not to think about the last time he'd seen Leo, and all the reasons he had given himself for staying away.

* * *

Leo took Chris's spot at the little table after he'd gone and looked at Victor across the table. His head was spinning after only a few moments with his son. He was disappointed that Chris didn't look happier to see him, but he had already known that would be the case. He was surprised, too, that there hadn't even been an argument, just the simple announcement that he was finally going to come home. Leo knew it wouldn't be the end of it, but they could deal with that as it came up. For now, he looked over at his father-in-law with a new respect. Only a few minutes and the son that had been gone for years was finally coming home.

"How'd you get him to agree to come home?" he asked.

"I told him he should," Victor said, stirring his tea. "That did occur to you, right?"

Leo tried to imagine that conversation between Chris and himself, and no matter how it played out in his mind, it didn't turn out quite so positively.

He stared at Victor across the table. "He always got along better with you."

Victor smiled a wide, beaming smile. "I was the good grandfather, in Chris's other life. It makes it easy."

"I'll say." Leo drummed his fingers against the table.

"You know," Victor said, "you really just need to sit him down and make him talk to you. You guys were pretty close at the end. You can get that back."

Leo turned to watch the door, eager to see Chris walk back in, and trying not to think about him disappearing again instead of returning to the coffee shop. "I hope so," he said, just as he saw Chris reenter the shop, with a single duffle bag thrown over his shoulder. He breathed a sigh of relief. He thought he heard Victor do the same.

"Where's the rest of it?" he asked once Chris had approached the table.

"The rest of what?"

"Your stuff." He pointed at the bag. "You've been here a while. You must have more than that. The girls collect at least that much in a week."

Chris dropped the bag by his feet. "That's all there is," he said evenly.

Leo looked up into his face, and despite still looking physically in his twenties, his eyes were tired, more so almost than he remembered, and that had a been a Chris with the weight of the entire world on his shoulders. This was a different kind of weight, and Leo had an inkling of what it consisted of, if ten years in hiding were anything to judge by, but he knew it was more than that. He wished he could take the weight, no matter the cause, and shoulder it himself. Instead, he did what he could; he picked up the duffle bag and stood up next to his son.

"Ready?" he asked.

Chris looked hesitant, and Victor looked vaguely nauseous, but they both nodded their consent.


	8. Chapter 8

AN: Well, it's been a while since I've written anything for "Charmed" and I apologize. I hope some of you out there remember this and are still reading!

* * *

"You have some serious explaining to do, young man," –Piper, "Chris-Crossed"

* * *

Piper was busy. A ten-year-old daughter and a twelve-year-old son kept her that way, not counting the club or her crazy sisters or obsessed husband or growing extended family. So when she had a little down time, she took it. A spare moment to sit alone with a cup of tea and just breathe deeply was heavenly.

Melinda was upstairs with a friend having a Sunday play date, and Wyatt was at Magic School with Paige for some private tutoring. She had already prepared a snack for the afternoon, and had all the ingredients for dinner waiting for her. The club was stocked and booked through the end of the month, and the house was clean. She didn't know where Leo had gotten himself off to, but at that moment, tea and the opportunity to shut her eyes for a moment was more important anyway.

Leo was tenacious with the Chris issue, but Piper found it healthier, and yes, less painful to let him go. She wished Leo would find something else to focus on, perhaps his two living breathing children.

She sighed and opened her eyes to take another sip of tea, and there he was, standing in the doorway. Chris.

_I'm hallucinating_, she thought, frozen with tea cup pressed to her lips. _I'm so stressed out I'm actually hallucinating._

"Hi," he said, but didn't come any closer.

She took the opportunity to put her tea cup down as slowly as she could and raised her hands back up carefully, just in case he wasn't a hallucination but something much direr.

He watched her hands and backed away carefully, until he was standing beyond the doorframe in the other room.

"Okay then," he said. "Um, so I'll just be going."

When he was gone she picked her tea cup back up and suddenly wished she had something stronger.

* * *

"Hey," Leo said, coming downstairs after dropping Chris's stuff off in the spare bedroom to find him standing in the living room, looking lost. "Did you find your mother?"

"Yeah," he said. "So I think I'm going to go and stay at Grandpa's."

"Oh," Leo said. "Sure. I uh, I put your stuff upstairs, but you can go and grab it. Where's Piper?"

Chris looked over his shoulder, like he was making sure she wasn't right there. "In the conservatory," he said.

Leo was surprised he wasn't still there with her. He didn't think that boded well for their first contact in so many years. "Alright, well. At least stay for dinner. Or drop your stuff off and come back for dinner. You should meet your siblings."

Chris hesitated. "Sure. Maybe. I'll think about it."

They stood there awkwardly, and Leo wanted to reach out and hug him, to beg him not to leave, even if he did know where he was going. Right now anywhere outside the manor seemed like much too far away.

"So I'm going to go," Chris said, and slid past Leo to jog up the stairs.

"Hey," Leo called, stopping him on the stairs. "I'm serious about dinner."

Chris nodded down at him. "Yeah. I know."

Leo watched him until he turned the corner at the top and he couldn't see him anymore. Then he made his way to the conservatory. He hoped it was still in one piece.

* * *

When Piper looked up again, Leo was standing where she had thought she'd seen Chris only a few moments before. She breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of her husband.

"Hi honey," she said. "Are you home for the rest of the day?"

"Yeah," he said, but he was giving her a curious look.

"What?" she asked.

"I just thought you'd be a little more emotional about this," he said after a small hesitation.

"About what?"

"Chris. Didn't you talk to him?"

"What?" She was becoming suspicious that Leo had started to hallucinate, too. That or they had a demon in the house.

He came and sat down next to her and took the tea cup away from her and placed it gently on the coffee table. Then he grabbed her hands and held them gently.

He looked into deep into her eyes for a while, studying whatever he saw there. Then he said, "Chris is home. He came to talk to you. What happened?"

She felt all the breath leave her body. "Chris is home?"

He frowned. "Piper." He said her name with a touch of admonishment.

She gasped and looked at him, then turned back to look at the doorway. "I thought I was hallucinating."

He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles and gave her a small smile. "No, it's really him."

* * *

Chris ran his hand over the closed door to the room he knew was Wyatt's, and then stopped outside the room that would have been his. It would be Melinda's now, and he listened outside the door until he heard the soft voices of two little girls at play. Acting on impulse, he grabbed the doorknob and turned it, opening the door.

Inside, there was a dark haired girl with dark brown eyes just like her mother's. He barely glanced at the other child, so intent was he on Melinda. She'd taken his place, was his twin really, and he loved her instantly. She was beautiful, and intense and she turned bright, intelligent eyes up to look at him.

He wished he'd never come home. He didn't want to take anything away from her, and he didn't want to ever feel bitter about what she didn't even know she'd taken away from him.

"Who're you?" she asked.

"My name's Chris," he said, and came inside the room. "What's yours?"

"Mom says I shouldn't talk to strangers."

"I know your mom," he said. "We're not strangers."

She glanced at the other girl, then stood up, dropping the markers they had been sharing. "If you're a…" she hesitated, looking again at the other girl. "If you're not good then you'll be in big trouble." She held her hands up in front of her just like Piper.

He glanced at the other girl, intent on her markers, and wondered about Piper allowing non-magical children into this house, and started to orb, just enough to turn a little blue so Melinda could see. The other girl looked up, but missed the show, shrugged at whatever she thought she'd seen out of the corner of her eye and went back to drawing.

"I'm good," he said.

"Oh," she breathed. "Okay. Do you work with dad?"

"Yeah," he said, and tried not to think about how he'd just essentially been fired. "Can I draw with you?"

Melinda nodded and sat back down. "I'm Melinda. This is Joby," she said, and the other girl looked up and smiled shyly. "We're working on ideas for parent-teacher day. We all have to draw pictures to leave on our desks and our parents are supposed to guess which one is ours."

"We're going to makes ours weird," said Joby, finally speaking up. "So it'll be hard for them to guess."

Chris sat down with them and reached for some paper and a marker. "Good idea."

* * *

"How did you find him?" Piper asked.

"The elders finally told me," Leo said. "They knew all along, but Chris asked them not to tell us."

"What do you mean? Chris could have come home, and he didn't?"

Leo nodded grimly, his eyes focused on their joined hands.

"Oh," she said. "How did he survive after Gideon stabbed him?"

Leo shook his head a little, both in denial and in an effort to cast off bad memories. "He didn't. He died."

Piper pulled her hands out of his, and studied his face even though he wouldn't look at her. "What does that mean? He's a full whitelighter now? That's why he looks the same as before?"

"No," Leo said. "It's something different. They gave him back his life, but he won't age until he's supposed to naturally, the same as Melinda. It was supposed to be a gift. For him, for all of us."

"But he ran away."

"Yes."

"For ten years."

"Yes."

Piper stood up and started to pace in the little conservatory. The story didn't seem right. She had an idea why he didn't come home in the first place. She'd known him for a good amount of time ten years ago, more then enough to know that he had a few issues with them. But why come back now?

"What happened?" she asked, stopped to stare down at Leo.

"What?" He looked up at her confused.

"Why did they tell you now?"

"I don't know," he said. "Chris hasn't told me anything."

She brushed a hand through her hair and sighed. "Typical."


	9. Chapter 9

It has been a LONG time, and I am very embarrassed that I've been so neglectful. But I've finished one WIP this year already, so this is next on the list. In case you're curious, my outline says that this will be 16 chapters total. Since it's been so long that I've worked on this, if you notice any glaring continuity issues, please do let me know. I am so grateful to everyone who's read, favorited, or commented on this and my other Charmed stories.

* * *

"Well, if you see him, tell him I'd like to talk to him when he has a chance," –Piper, "A Wrong Day's Journal into Right"

* * *

Piper showed up in the doorway and all three of them hid their drawings right away. She looked down at three pairs of the most innocent eyes she'd ever seen.

"Hi," she said. "Are you girls all right? Having a good time?"

Melinda and Joby laughed. "Chris isn't a girl, mom. Duh."

Piper smiled down at her little girl, her little miracle. "Of course, honey. I was just joking. Joby, your mom will be here in a half hour, so make sure you two clean up before then, okay?" The girls nodded, still covering up brightly colored pictures with little fingers. Chris had taken the moment to fold his up and stand up. She looked at him, really looked, and he was the same age, but he looked older. "Can I talk to you?"

"Of course."

She closed the door behind them, then led Chris up to the attic, the family sanctuary. She stopped in the middle, a little unsure what she wanted to do or say, but Chris moved past her, right to the book, and stood with his hands hovering above it.

"I'm a little curious," he said, and then finally let his hands drop onto the cover, tracing around the living symbol there. The triquetta that breathed with the family, that broke when the family broke. The book felt warm under his hands, she knew it did, because it always had.

"About what? You really think the book would reject you?" Piper said, coming closer to stand on the other side of the podium. Chris didn't look at her.

"I'm not exactly family anymore," he said.

"Don't be absurd," she whispered.

He finally looked up, and she saw things in his eyes that she knew would be there: pain, and loss, and grief, and memory.

"I've never exactly been a part of this family, your family."

"You're my son."

He shook his head. "No, I was _her_ son, and she died."

"Chris, you changed the future, and it doesn't happen that way anymore. It won't happen that way."

"That's my point. My mother is dead. The only mother I'll ever have, and she was you, but you're not her."

Piper came around the podium, turned him by the shoulder and gripped both of his arms in her hands. She wanted to shake him, to knock him out of his head and back into the world around him. Instead, she wrapped her arms around him and hugged him.

"I'm still her," she said. "I'm still her."

* * *

Chris stood still and let her hug him. She smelled like his mother, the one that he remembered, god, ages ago now, but this Piper had lifted her hands to him with anger more times than love. This Piper had thrown him out of the house and looked at him with skepticism even after she was pregnant. And now the baby hadn't even been him.

He lifted one hand and touched her back, her hair, just a little, and she pulled away and she was crying.

"You died," she said.

"Yeah, I did." He shrugged and placed his hands on the book one more time before pulling them away. It didn't feel right to him anymore. It didn't feel like anything more than a book. "It sucked."

The look she shot him next was exasperated, even through her tears, and he smiled a little, because at least that felt familiar.

She sniffed and rubbed her tears away, and he could see stern, in control Piper coming back to the fore.

"Where have you been?" she asked. "Leo said you…died. But didn't."

"The elders gave me a second life."

"That doesn't explain where you've been. Why you haven't been home."

He shrugged and moved away from the podium and the cold book. "I chose to live a life. I've been working as a whitelighter. I went to school. I did things that weren't possible when Wyatt was still evil."

"You could have done that from here, with your family."

He sat down on a relatively uncluttered bench against the attic wall and shrugged again. He didn't want to argue with her, but he didn't agree with her.

She huffed a little and placed her hands on the book, in much the way he had just done. He knew that it felt warm and alive to her still, and tried to shove down the jealousy that threatened to bubble up.

"It's very confusing," she finally murmured. "I'm sorry that I didn't trust it was you when you came into the room before. And I'm sorry that ten years ago I did believe right away that the baby was you."

"Well," he said, "you were right. Melinda is a beautiful child, and I knew that I would change everything the moment I stepped through the portal. I accept that."

"But you can't accept that we would still be your family now?" She came over and sat next to him and grabbed one of his hands to hold between her own. He looked down at them and they were a mother's hands. They were the hands he had hazy memories of as a ten year old. "As a Halliwell, Christopher, you should know better."

He shook his head. "Leo can be very persuasive," he said, but knowing that he had crumbled like a piece of paper when Leo had brought Victor. "But everything's different for me, now." He looked into her eyes and smiled sadly. She looked everything like the mother he remembered, and he could see that was serious about accepting him as her son. But so many parts of him rejected that, and he knew that she would see that in eyes as well.

She opened her mouth to respond but the doorbell startled them and broke the mood. He pulled his hand free and she was left grasping empty air.

"That would be Joby's mom," he said. "You'd better go."

She looked sad, but she stood. "We've got time, now, Chris. We'll figure this out."

He forced himself to nod and watched her hurry out of the attic, already calling for the girls as the doorbell rang again. When she was gone, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his picture.

He ran his fingers over it, thinking about how things had been and how things were now. Even in just stick figures, it was possible to make out Leo and Piper, and their two kids, Wyatt and Melinda.


End file.
